Only in it for the dumplings

For lunch today I paid a return visit to the Czech Inn, scene of my recent upsetting Staropramen experience. I used to go to this pub quite a bit last century, back when it was Isolde's Tower: it was the sort of place one never planned to go to, but ended up there, on the edge of Temple Bar, when everywhere else was heaving. Good times.

Now it's a headquarters for Dublin's Czech workers, and is the only place serving a range of the food and drink from home, saving the handful of upmarket establishments with Budvar and Staro on tap. I had a plateful of roast pork with sauerkraut and knedlíky for just €8: even if possessed of the inclination and a big stick, I don't think I could beat that.

It was washed down with a pint of Gambrinus 10°, a smooth and malty pilsner I've met favourably in Prague once or twice. Unfortunately, this was tainted slightly with a touch of that acidic quality I experienced with my last Czech Inn pint. I conclude that the early afternoon is the wrong time to visit this pub. I'm sure once a few dozen pints have been run through the lines of an evening the quality goes up. However, with the sound system already blaring across the empty room, I dread to think what it's like with several hundred thirsty Czechs letting off steam.

Anyway, I will have go back sooner or later because I still haven't had my dark beer fix. Fortunately I'll be able to sink a pint of Budvar Dark tomorrow at the first ever Great Irish Beer Festival (Brits & Yanks: only click the link if you promise not to laugh) in Galway. The thought of that will be sustaining me on my 140-mile trip to the other side of Ireland in the morning.

Marks, but few sparks

You'd think by now I'd have got over the fact that multinational supermarkets totally stiff their Irish customers on beer selection, but no: here I go again. Tesco are the worst offenders, but even Lidl offers a much superior beer range 80 miles up the road in the UK.

So I was delighted to see Marks & Spencer had seen some sense and graced the shelves of their Irish stores with three bottled offerings. First up is an Italian lager called Birra D'Oro. It's a rather gassy and bland affair. Slightly dry, but otherwise unworthy of note. I presume they're going for something resembling Nastro Azzurro, not one of the world's great beers, but they've even failed at that. More vapid than vaporetto.

Next is a Belgian witbier, innovatively titled Bière Blanche. It pours a very pale yellow and is not so much cloudy as slightly misty. Bizarrely there's no aroma. The orange zest listed in the ingredients does come through in the flavour in a sort of sherberty way. However, this is a cipher of a witbier. €3 I won't see again.

I figured I would do better with M&S Irish Stout, knowing that it is contract brewed by the Carlow Brewing Company, makers of the excellent O'Hara's. The first thing to confirm my prejudice was the superb head retention. This was followed by a rich, full bitter chocolate and roasted barley flavour. Excellent stuff, but not quite up to the standard of bottled O'Hara's and 20c dearer too. (O'Hara's on draught, incidentally, is nitrogenated: better than Guinness, obviously, but a touch flavourless.)

Of course, the feeling that M&S were looking after us didn't last long, with the announcement of their new range of bottle conditioned beers which have yet to arrive here. Whether they ever will remains to be seen. I'm pessimistic.

And that brings me to my second pet peeve. Birra D'Oro, says the label, is "Brewed in Italy", not "Italia"; Bière Blanche "Brewed in Belgium", not "België/Belgique". Yet for some bizarre reason, the stout is "Brewed in Eire", not Ireland. What's that about, apart from poor spelling?

The stouts of wrath

Guinness Foreign Extra Stout is a relative new-comer to the Irish market. It took the demands of a growing African community to make Diageo distribute it directly in its country of origin. Before that the stronger Guinness was shipped from St. James's Gate straight to foreign parts and then re-exported back to Ireland in small quantities. A slightly tweaked version, with sorghum, is made in Nigeria for the local market there and occasionally shows up on the shelves in the UK.

It was recently brought to my attention that the new Foreign Extra Stout was not exactly the same product as the re-exported version I was used to. Sure enough, the domestic product is 7.5% ABV, while the export-then-import is 8%. And of course the name is different: Foreign Extra for us, Special Export for everyone else.

Intrigued by this, I decided a parallel tasting was in order, so I'm sitting here with one of each. The Foreign Extra is presented in a distinctive high-shouldered bottle engraved with the trademark harp; Special Export comes in the classically Belgian slope-neck.

Straight out of the bottle, Special Export has a thicker head, though both wind up with just a thin film of foam before long. The biggest difference between the two beers is in their respective mouthfeels, with Foreign Extra offering a prickly fizz, while Special Export is fuller, smoother and altogether more Belgian, frankly.

The tastes are certainly similar, with Foreign Extra drier and hoppier, while Special Export is packed with sweet malty flavours. This one comes down to a matter of personal preference, I suppose, but the export version edges it for me.

So there you have it: I'm not entirely happy with a product Guinness has put on the Irish market. Big surprise, wha'?

My ur-bock hell

Now, to me, the syllable "bock" implies a dark beer. Doppelbock, eisbock, bokkbier -- all dark. Even maibock has a bit of colour to it. So I was surprised when I encountered Einbecker Ur-Bock in an off licence recently, presented in a green bottle, and quite plainly not bock-coloured.

It wasn't until I got it home that I noticed the "hell" in tiny outline letters on the neck. So presumably there's a non-hell version, properly dark, with the same label. It pours a limpid gold, giving off heady malt aromas. Tastewise, it's definitely true to its north German roots. The malt is there in spades, reminding me of a toned-down Jever, or an extreme Beck's. Behind the malt, there's a sugary sweetness, possibly connected to the 6.5% alcohol, and finishing up with a dry hoppiness catching in the back of the throat and necessitating another sip.

This Einbecker is a lovely little beer, brimming with flavour and well worth a look, if you can get past that initial bock shock.

O my brothers

One of the tasks I set myself when visiting Belgium last month was to become better acquainted with the country's Trappist beers. I remember on my early trips to Belgium going systematically through the Trappists and deciding that Westmalle was, on balance, the brand for me. I've had my share of Chimay in the meantime, but mostly the Cistercian brothers at Westmalle do for me very nicely.

Mainly to have something written here on the various Belgian Trappist beers, I revisited as many as I could get my hands on. In general, they retail for about a third of the price they do at home, so as labours of love go, this was one of the less taxing ones.

I'll start with the only Scourmont beer I drank, a Chimay Bleu in Brussels' puppet theatre theme bar, Toone. Despite a powerful 9% ABV, this is quite a light and fruity brown-red ale, with just a bitter kick at the end. It's unquestionably a good beer, but fairly unchallenging. My Trappist benchmark, you might say.

Falling below the standard it sets is Achel Bruin. I was surprised at how understated the flavours in this beer were. Having served it chilled, I let it sit and warm up for ages, waiting for the taste to come through, but as it approached room temperature there were only the vaguest hints of fruit. A Trappist beer can taste bland. Achel Blond is rather better, with a nicely balanced mouthfeel: prickly yet fluffy. 8% ABV gives it a satisfying weight, but it remains smooth and uncloying. The flavours are aromatic and floral: sweet, but not too sweet. A class act.

I experienced a similar contrast with the two Westvleteren beers I brought home. Westvleteren Blond is a light orange colour with a full fruity nose. The foretaste is fruity and bitter, with an ashen dryness at the end. This beer comes in like a tripel, and goes out like a French wheat beer. At only 5.8% ABV, proof that you can get Trappist complexity without high levels of alcohol.

My first whiff of Westvleteren 8 gave me vinegar, and lots of it, like sticking one's nose into a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. This was borne out in the intense vinegary foretaste, and only a faint hint of malt and dates at the back, along with the opaque brown colour, indicated that this was a Trappist ale at all. It's possible that I may have bought a dud. I'll arrange a rematch at the earliest opportunity.

My Chimay benchmark was rendered useless by Orval. This powerful, heavy beer is often described as tasting "horsey", which is perfectly understandable. The malty flavours have an added sour funk which, though not unpleasant, takes a bit of getting used to.

Coming back to Westmalle Dubbel, I took the time to work out why I like it so much. The conclusion I reached is: balance. Yes, the plummy flavour is rich and sumptuous, offering a luxuriousness that is entirely inappropriate to the lifestyle of its brewers, but it is also perfectly balanced between fruit sweetness and hops bitterness. The way the flavours bounce off each other in a choreographed complexity is what keeps me coming back. I decided I wasn't about to go changing my opinions of the best Trappist beer...

... until I came to the last of the Belgian brewing abbeys. Rochefort 10 features elements of all the above. It is a very dark hue and offers up little by way of aroma. The flavour, however, is a workout. Up front there are plums and strawberries, followed by a bittersweet spiciness and a bready character, reminiscent of fruitcake. In my opinion, however, it is upstaged by its little brother Rochefort 8. This one isn't quite so intense, but is certainly complex. There are notes of caramel and smoke in here, and a dose of rich chicory. It adds up to a beer that starts at the benchmark but goes that extra mile.

I don't think I'm ready for Westmalle to hand over the trophy just yet, but I was enormously impressed with the Rocheforts. Consider this a play-off, with two contenders left for the final...

Time for a ruby?

Beer and food? That's a no-brainer for me and means curry every time. Historically speaking, the beer should be Carlsberg, the first lager to be associated with Indian food back in the 1920s. In general, however, I tend to drink Cobra. Yes I know it's made with maize and is about as Indian as I am, but I don't care.

In the halcyon days of the Dublin Brewing Company, my curry would always be accompanied by Maeve's Crystal Weiss, a spectacular spicy weissbier which sat beautifully with Indian food. It's gone now, though another Irish craft wheat beer is almost as good, namely Curim from the Carlow Brewing Company.

For this post, however, I'm going with a new "slow-brewed" lager called Time. This appears to be another one of the plastic paddies I ranted about over on Hop Talk last month. "Born in Ireland" says the label, and "Brewed in the European Union". The web address given is dead and the company address is an office over a boutique in central Dublin, also the address of several marketing and communications companies. It all adds up to contract brewed abroad and passed off as Irish.

Time, incidentally, was a brand formerly used by Smithwick's before it was taken over by Guinness. If Diageo still owned the trademark, no doubt they would have had it made at one of their Irish lager factories in Kilkenny or Dundalk where they make Harp, Satzenbrau, Bud and Carlsberg. However, I'm told the "Time Brewing Company" acquired the name when the trademark lapsed and they're having this brewed in England.

The beer itself, I'm pleased to report, is quite decent. It has a fairly light carbonation for a pilsner, which is a plus point when it comes to curry, and a bold malty flavour which cuts through the vindaloo sauce beautifully. At the end there's a little bit of a dry hops bite, but nothing too severe. It puts me in mind of Beck's, and if I had to guess a country of origin I would have placed it in Germany. All-in-all, Time passes the curry test with flying colours.

However, what with the vast range of eastern European lagers now available at bargain prices, I find it bizarre that someone would try and push an Irish-themed premium-priced lager onto the market. This sort of money will get you a bottle of Flensburger or Augustiner in any decent off licence. Why would a punter, either here or abroad, be attracted to this?

The great taste of brut

It's a beer I've been intensely curious about for years, staring at me from the end of the top shelf in Redmond's every time I go in. However, it took my recent visit to Brussels for me to finally buy a bottle of DeuS, attracted by the bargain basement price of €10.

The manual attached to the neck outlines the tortuous method of brewing and conditioning this "brut des Flandres". It's made and bottled in Belgium then shipped to France to mature.

Despite the champagne overtones in the presentation, this is quite a sweet and fruity honey-coloured ale. The strength is a prodigious 11.5% ABV, but it bears no resemblance to the likes of Bush or any other high-alcohol Belgian. Instead, it's a rather light, sippable affair with pronounced overtones of clove and ginger.

DeuS is, by all accounts an odd beer. I don't know if all the work that goes into it is really worthwhile, but it is certainly well-crafted and interesting.